Black Duck Software CEO Tim Yeaton says his Waltham, MA-based company is fulfilling a mission that it set out on when he started two and a half years ago.

“We enable organizations that are building software products and applications to use open source components successfully in their development,” Yeaton says.

Black Duck was initially known for its technology that helped software developers comply with the licenses for different open source software components they used. Yeaton says the company’s product can also help others build software with open source elements from the ground up, rather than just policing themselves.

“When used early on in the development process as part of a suite of tools, it enables organizations to accelerate software development and reduce costs,” he says.

Black Duck says it already had the” world’s definitive database of open source projects and information” from its original business, and decided to focus on creating a community for individual open source software developers. Black Duck helped accelerate that with its acquisition of Ohloh.net last year from Geeknet (NASDAQ: GKNT). Ohloh offered a free public directory of open source software and a Web community of developers working with those components. Black Duck is working on integrating Ohloh with its own code search site, Koders.com, to create “a single integrated destination for developers, a wide-angle lens into the open source ecosystem,” Yeaton says.

The company still makes money from selling its technology to enterprise software makers using open source components but connecting with developers and building up that community on its free site supports the business, Yeaton says. “We think that actually better enables the entire software industry to more effectively use open source,” Yeaton says.

Last year, Black Duck also acquired SpikeSource, a maker of software and services for identifying application components and assessing compliance. Yeaton says that deal was entirely a technology acquisition, but that it will build those capabilities into its for-fee enterprise products, as well as its free website for developers. To round it all out, Black Duck also acquired the consultancy Olliance Group, which helps companies define and drive their open source strategies, this past January. “Our products work best when they’re automating a series of well defined policies and strategies,” Yeaton says.

Black Duck has added 24 jobs this year, largely in development and services roles. The company now has about 150 employees, and has had 40 percent year-over-year sales growth for the last three years, Yeaton says. It hasn’t raised outside venture funding since 2009, and has been able to finance its own recent acquisitions.

The firm has better branded itself as the open source enablement company in the past few years, Yeaton says, and it’s going to keep going on that mission. It’s all about “enabling other organizations to drive their own innovation,” Yeaton says.

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Dan Rossi is the new executive director of the Northwest Entrepreneur Network, replacing Rebecca Lovell, who took on a business-development job at tech news startup GeekWire earlier this month. Rossi was co-founder of Nanocel, a startup focused on an advanced liquid-cooling system for computer chips. He earned an MBA from the University of Washington last year. Lovell was executive director of NWEN for just over two years, and worked as program director for the Alliance of Angels for nearly three years before that. In announcing Rossi’s hiring, NWEN said Lovell will become a board member at the organization in addition to her chief business officer job at GeekWire.

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Since 2008, RunKeeper, the fitness-tracking, GPS-based mobile app from Boston-based startup FitnessKeeper, has helped runners log and track the distance, speed, and routes they’ve run and engage with a broader community of like-minded athletes. The “pro” $9.99 version of the tool even offers coaching via headphones to help runners hit their desired pace, understand how far they’ve gone, and mix up their speeds for interval workouts, all as their feet hit the pavement.

But now, the company is moving even further into an area that has traditionally been occupied by real, live fitness professionals, by offering mobile training plans and fitness classes

“We’re grouping them together almost like an SAT class or a spinning class at the gym and are trying to tap into that same psychology—but virtually, where you all collectively go after the same goal,” says FitnessKeeper founder and CEO Jason Jacobs. “What we envision is that these classes will become such a powerful motivator that they recreate the benefits of an in-person class, where you’re motivated by the energy in the room.”

The startup put out the first set of such classes on its store late last week, with 5K and half-marathon training plans designed by Olympian runner Jeff Galloway. Jacobs says already several hundred users have signed up. Those who purchase the classes—which range from $9.99 to $19.99—will have the set of runs designed by Galloway populate their RunKeeper calendars. They also will be sent an alert that notifies them which distance they are supposed to run each day. When they physically go out for a jog, they can flag that they are completing a particular run as called for in the training guide. They’ll also be connected to others in the RunKeeper community who are training under the same program.

“The plan is to roll them out in such a way so that if you have a race at a certain time it can follow your schedule,” Jacobs says. And speaking of races, FitnessKeeper has also made that a more prominent part of the user experience. Weeks before it rolled out the classes, it introduced a race page section of the site, where users can search for races based on distance and location, and connect with other runners in the RunKeeper community looking to do the same race. And the company hasn’t spent a marketing dime to attract this information, but has crowdsourced the content, relying on the RunKeeper community to submit races on their radar.

With the features introduced in the past month, the big focus is streamlining the entire process of running, racing, and training, Jacobs says. “Runners don’t just track their activities, but they participate in races and follow a lot of training programs,” he says.

And typically, this entire process is fragmented, he says. Runners research and sign up for races in one place, scout out and follow training programs in … Next Page »

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Livemocha is ready to kick some language learning butt—at least according to chief executive Michael Schutzler. The Bellevue, WA-based startup is already the largest online language learning community in the world, with over six million members from over 200 countries actively studying some 38 languages—not bad numbers for a 3-year-old company. But this isn’t enough for Schutzler, who has his eyes set on beating popular language learning software company Rosetta Stone.

“Our mission is to do this for every language, and our goal is to get every single person on the planet to converse in multiple languages,” he says.

While this may seem like a pretty lofty ambition, given that there are literally thousands of languages spoken throughout the world, Livemocha does have one advantage—it already has an established global community. Even though the company is based here in the states, this isn’t a U.S.-centric company. Ninety percent of Livemocha users, according to Schutzler, are based outside of the U.S.

Livemocha is structured quite differently from its rival, Arlington, VA-based Rosetta Stone (NYSE: RST). Rosetta Stone offers CD-ROM courses in 29 languages (and a few more in varying dialects)—most of which come in multiple levels, and run anywhere from $219 to $249 a pop. Instead of selling retail software, Livemocha offers a series of free and paid lessons accessible online, where it connects learners with native speakers around the world in real time—what Schutzler calls the centerpiece that differentiates it from the competition.

Every month Livemocha’s 6 million members help to build out its community by creating more than a million speaking and writing activities for each other, reviewing each others’ work. Its users generate an average of 35,000 exercise reviews every day—and they practice real time conversation skills with other users in the network.

“At any moment in time half the community is contributing in an editorial fashion, and the other half of the community is learning,” Schutzler says.”We’ve created this transformative language experience that makes conversation the real language.”

Rosetta Stone’s CD-ROM can’t do that, he says.

Michael Schutzler

“The investment in Rosetta Stone is massive, but the average time its users spend on it is only 2.5 hours, over 6 months,” he says.

Why is this? Because learning a foreign language is “really hard work,” especially for adults. So when the going gets tough, many give up. Livemocha has found a way to marry language learning course curriculum with community interaction, and this, he says, is what makes the Livemocha system more effective. While Schutzler declined to comment on the retention levels of Livemocha’s users, he did say that the engagement is much more pronounced because of the social nature of the community. He himself logs on to tutor others in the community in English and German, and is currently learning Spanish, and “refreshing” his Arabic.

“At the heart of what we do is conversation practice, and the only hope we ever have of learning and mastering a language is talking with a conversation,” Schutzler says. The company even has a growing number of members who are starting to make a living on Livemocha, through points earned tutoring other members, grading coursework, and creating new practice exercises.

Livemocha currently has 38 free languages available on its site—everything from commonly spoken languages such as Spanish, English, and Hindi, to the more obscure Catalan, Icelandic, and Latvian. And yesterday it rolled out its more advanced paid service, Livemocha Active Courses, in five … Next Page »

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The second annual Seattle 2.0 Awards, a celebration of local software startups and tech entrepreneurs, took place in Seattle last night. Jonathan Sposato, the former CEO of Picnik (recently acquired by Google) gave the keynote talk. The award winners were Glenn Kelman of Redfin (best entrepreneur blog), Eric Koester from Cooley (best service provider to startups), Greg Gottesman of Madrona Venture Group (best venture capitalist), Rich Barton of Zillow (best startup CEO), Redfin (best startup), Jenny Lam of Jackson Fish Market (best startup designer), Ignite Seattle (best event for startups), Andy Liu (best angel investor), TisBest (best nonprofit startup), Scott Porad from Cheezburger Network (best startup technologist), and Bonanzle (best bootstrapped startup). Congratulations to all the nominees and winners.

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“Exhaustingly awesome.”

“The talent in that room is pretty inspiring.”

“54 hours…from idea to products I’d pay money for in just 54 hours. Wow.”

Those are just a couple comments I gleaned from some of the attendees and guests at the demos held at the Startup Weekend demo finale. I’d second each of these thoughts—you are crazy if you didn’t walk out of that room with a clear sense of potential and possibilities.

I had the privilege to attend Startup Weekend held in Seattle from March 19-21 at Adobe’s Fremont campus—my third time participating in a Weekend. If you haven’t heard about Startup Weekend, it is a 54-hour intensive event that throws a group of entrepreneurs, developers, business people, coders, and startup junkies into a room, lets those individuals form teams around crowdsourced ideas, plies them with caffeine, beer, and junk food, and lets the magic happen.

And what results from that combination is downright stunning. Sitting in the audience on Sunday, the crowd was treated to demos of an amazingly rich Facebook application, a powerful application leveraging open-source mobile phone camera software, a ready-made online portal for “green” consumers, an iPad game for kids, iPhone applications for video game swapping and mobile app discovery, and location-based tools to better connect users, just to name a few of the demos. I go to meet the people and get a chance to see what smart people think are the next big ideas for innovation. And this weekend we saw some interesting trends.

What did I take away from this Startup Weekend?

Now first let me say that it’s easy to get caught up in the exciting demos and the “tech-focused” product ideas being offered up at an event like this. But the reality is we might only see a couple of these technologies make it past the weekend and be heard from again. Even still, I think there are some real insights that I drew from the projects about what is on the horizon for startups in the technology space, mass-adoption of technologies, and more generally about the Seattle tech scene. Here are my thoughts:

* Everything is getting more social. Facebook and Twitter alone have created huge opportunities for new companies. Raising Uncle Jesse (a “hopefully” viral Facebook app), Digri (discussed below), MobVoice (a real-time crowd-source rating service), Locql (a tool to get local information from local individuals in your social networks), and EveryDayOneThing (a “green” consumer portal) were technologies that all tied into Facebook, the largest social network in the world, and/or Twitter. As our personal online networks grow, technologies will be needed to help us better manage, mine, and understand our networks.

* Location, location, location. Lots of folks outside the tech world have never heard of tools like Foursquare or Gowalla which provide location-based mobile service (the most common current application is some variation of “checking into” bars, coffee shops, etc. to let your social community know where you are at). While these location-based platforms may not be completely mainstream yet, a couple “little” companies (such as Google and Facebook) have their eyes on this space … Next Page »

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To do great work, you need community. I don’t think people generally comprehend just how important it is.

If you’re not the social type, perhaps you can get more work done today and tomorrow working behind closed doors. But if you do this long enough, you start to lose touch with the world. Your work becomes more and more irrelevant. What you can learn from your network is vast. And when you work in a community, you get hints along the way about which direction you should take.

Whether you’re a research scientist or a writer, the importance of community is there. And if you’re an entrepreneur, it goes even further: the community defines your chances of getting an outcome—any outcome.

“Release your product early and often,” they say. Your personal community, your user community (the small one that exists), and the entrepreneurial community will put you to the test. As you iterate, you’ll learn whether or not you’re on the right track.

When entrepreneurs are sequestered off by themselves, they wilt, at least just a little bit. And that little bit matters when you’re on a treacherous rollercoaster or on a dangerous mission searching for the Holy Grail. People who are as independent and gritty as entrepreneurs may not always like to admit these things. But I experienced it first hand. For a period of time, I had to work by myself. This was a discouraging time. Worst of all, it was terribly unproductive.

Then I realized this is a problem that many people in my situation likely had and that I had a unique opportunity to help alleviate it on a small scale. On the first floor of the building I live in, I had everything a group of entrepreneurs needed to work— desks, Internet, a ping pong table—so I decided to invite a few of my fellow entrepreneurs to work with me. Soon, a few joined me, and like magic, my ability to do great work was completely restored. The productivity of my new “co-workers,” most of whom had also been working alone, also increased. And along with it, our enjoyment of our work soared. (You can read more about our work group here).

The entrepreneurial environment is very cultural, and emerging companies are a product of the ecosystem. If money was made in enterprise security software yesterday, you’ll likely have an investor culture more friendly to enterprise security software today. Where there’s funding, entrepreneurs tend to follow. And where there’s a high density of entrepreneurs, there is energy and innovation and brilliance.

A high density of entrepreneurs is key to this entire cycle. When you have strong connections between the right minds, you have a lot of potential energy. It is only a matter of time before a spark comes along to ignite it.

Recently, thought leaders, particularly Bill Warner (an Xconomist), have started conversations about improving the Boston entrepreneurial ecosystem. In a recent blog, Bill outlined the “plays” necessary to grow the region. These plays include finding new talent, funding first-timers, pushing each other, and spreading success.

To help with such steps, we should think about our community centerpieces—Xconomy, Cambridge Innovation Center, MIT Enterprise Forum, MITX, and so on—and examine the role they play in the ecosystem. Then, identify the gaps that can be filled. Are Boston’s university students aware of the Boston startup ecosystem? Do zero-stage entrepreneurs have an environment that spurs them on in Boston? These are examples of questions that need to be considered..

Gaps in the community drain potential from the ecosystem. I know from experience—I found myself in one. But in a community as motivated as Boston’s, I’m confident these gaps will be filled. I know I intend to play my role in the effort. Others are already hard at work.

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[Updated Feb. 9 and Feb. 10 with comments and funeral service/memorial donations details---see below] Xconomy is very sad to note that John Mucci, the co-founder and former CEO and director of SiCortex, the Maynard, MA-based startup that sought to build a new generation of energy-efficient supercomputers, passed away yesterday of a heart attack, according to reports we have received.

Mucci had a long history as a sales executive, and before co-founding SiCortex with Matt Reilly and Jud Leonard around 2003, had been a vice president at Thinking Machines Corporation, where he worked from 1986 to 1994, according to his LinkedIn page. He had also served in several executive positions at Digital Equipment Corp., and had co-founded another startup, TopicalNet (previously known as Continuum Software), according to his bio on the SiCortex site, which is still up although the company announced it was closing its doors last May.

“It is a sad day for all… less competition, unemployed seventy some workers…” Mucci wrote Xconomy in an e-mail at the time SiCortex closed, even though he had been replaced 10 months earlier as CEO. I had not verified the current status of SiCortex at the time of this post.

SiCortex had been funded in part by Polaris Venture Partners. Polaris general partner Bob Metcalfe wrote this in an email tonight: “While working on SiCortex, John and I walked together, he my guide for three years, through the exhibits of the SuperComputing conferences. Everyone there knew and liked John. And I mean everyone.”

Mucci, who had a B.S. from Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University, was reportedly working on a new venture. I could not verify his age by the time of this post.

Update, Feb. 9, 2010: SiCortex co-founder Matt Reilly, who says Mucci was 67 years old when he died, writes this: “John was a man of great enthusiasms, but I think the greatest was building connections with and between people. John didn’t build SiCortex, as much as he knitted it together. As a partner, a coworker, a friend, and guide he gave more than I could ever repay.

John was exploring several new opportunities and ventures at the time of his passing. He will be sorely missed.”

Update, Feb. 10, 2010: The funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, February 13th, at First Parish Church in Stow, MA. A wake will be held from 5 p.m.-8 p.m. on Friday, February 12th, at Fowler Kennedy Funeral Home in Maynard.

Memorial donations may be made to the Trustees of Tufts University, Travis Fund for Needy Animals, Office of Development and Alumni Relations, Cummings School Veterinary Medicine, 200 Westboro Rd, North Grafton, MA, 01536; and WBUR Boston, Attn: Susan Tompkins, 890 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA, 02215.

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Seattle-based Survey Analytics has rolled out a total of 24 crowdsourcing websites for U.S. government agencies to help them solicit and manage feedback from citizens. Financial details of the current partnerships weren’t given. The sites are powered by IdeaScale, the company’s software platform for hosting and managing feedback from communities and customers. Last May, the White House announced it was using IdeaScale to power its Open Government Dialogue site. And this past weekend, California’s chief technology officer, P.K. Agarwal, said he is using IdeaScale to help gather ideas to improve the state’s IT systems. Survey Analytics has been bootstrapped since 2004 and is led by CEO and co-founder Vivek Bhaskaran.

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OK, I need to weigh in on this whole Battle of the Tech Bands thing. In case you didn’t know, it’s this Thursday night at the Middle East in Cambridge, MA. It has a major new twist this year: Seattle versus Boston. The battle is on.

And I’m torn. I’m from Boston, after all, but I’ve lived and worked in Seattle for the past couple years. I follow the music scene and the tech scene closely in both cities. It’s sort of like the Super Bowl, where Archie Manning has to choose between his son’s team, the Indianapolis Colts, and the New Orleans Saints, where he spent most of his NFL career in the 1970s. (Except I hate the Mannings—I’m a Pats fan. In fact, forget I ever brought this up.)

To help me sort it all out, I pinged Dave Dederer from Seattle startup Melodeo, makers of the nuTsie cloud-based music service, for his thoughts on the bicoastal band rivalry. Dederer is a founding member of the Seattle-based rock band, The Presidents of the United States of America. You probably know them from their early hits: “Lump,” “Peaches,” and “Kitty.” Dederer (pronounced DAY-derer) is the master of the three-string “guitbass” as well as the traditional guitar. Surely he’d have some bulletin-board material to throw Boston’s way?

“I don’t know if I have any trash-talk, other than to note that Boston and Seattle are both rough-and-tumble (formerly, anyway) cities with lots of hills and water all around and a seemingly endless supply of high-quality, distinctive rock and roll music,” Dederer says via e-mail. “The Modern Lovers, Aerosmith, Boston, The Pixies and many more from Boston…The Wailers, The Sonics, The Kingsmen, Heart, Queensryche, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, The Presidents of the USA, Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie and many more from Seattle and environs…well, if you put it that way, we pretty much blow Boston away!”

So there you go. Dederer adds that the Middle East club was the “home base” for his Presidents bandmate Chris Ballew during his years in Boston. “Funny—in a way, [Presidents of the USA] bridges the gap. Chris Ballew spent a long time in Boston and played a lot of music with the late Mark Sandman, one of the key figures there,” he says. Indeed, Sandman was a fixture of the Boston and national music scene in the 1990s, with his seminal bands Treat Her Right and Morphine. I’m lucky to have seen him play live twice.

With all due love and respect to Boston, I am backing the Seattle bands in this one—unless I’m called into duty as a judge, that is, in which case I’ll be, um, totally impartial. Lions Ambition (representing Boeing) and Juda’s Wake (Microsoft) played monstrous sets at our Battle last summer in Seattle. If nothing else, you will remember them—I guarantee it. Plus I have a thing for underdogs, and the boys from the Northwest will be facing a rowdy crowd on the road, in subfreezing temperatures, without most of their fans.

We’ve still got a few tickets left for the event, which is a fundraiser benefiting Science Club for Girls and Year Up Boston; tickets are $25 in advance, $35 at the door. (Check out Erin’s January 28 story for the details on the amazing door prizes we’ve got lined up for the audience, including Rock Band video game bundles, Lord of the Rings Online boxed sets, Xbox 360 games and accessories, H&R Block gift certificates, and iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaners).

McAlister Drive (formerly representing Linedata Services), The Dirty Truckers (representing American Well and formerly Sophos), and Deadbeat Darling (representing Pictela and formerly Akamai) will be formidable opponents for the Seattle bands, especially since they’ll be playing on their home turf. But this one will be won or lost on stage, not in the crowd.

Just like in business, it will all come down to execution. And I wouldn’t miss it for the world. See you Thursday.

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First Rob Glaser, then Ken Myer. Who’s next? (These things always seem to come in threes.)

As a journalist, it can be hard to take off a holiday like MLK Day—you never know what juicy news you’re going to miss. Myer announced yesterday that he’s stepping down from his post as CEO and president of the Washington Technology Industry Association as of early April 2010. During his three years of service, he has presided over the WTIA’s evolution into something that encompasses more than just software companies—it now includes sectors like hardware, electronics, and cleantech, across a diverse membership of about 1,000 (representing some 125,000 employees). He also seems to have injected some fresh ideas and talent into the nonprofit trade organization, whose staff numbers a modest 11.

I caught up with Myer, 52, by phone this morning. The former IBM executive and co-founder of Interval Systems seemed his usual self—in good spirits and focused on the present. We touched on a few issues, including the challenges he has faced as the head of one of the largest statewide tech associations, and his plans to dive back into the commercial sector.

—On the history of his involvement with WTIA: Myer says he was a volunteer with the organization, formerly known as the WSA (Washington Software Alliance), from 1997-2002. (He even met his wife through it.) He also served as a volunteer board member. When former CEO Kathy Wilcox said she was retiring in 2006, Myer thought that was “interesting,” but he figured he wouldn’t go after such a position until he was much older. He changed his mind and submitted his application on the last day resumes were due.

—On running WTIA like a startup: “I thought I’d take a business approach to a trade organization,” Myer says. “And I wanted to give back [to the community]. It’s been really fun. It’s a young staff, and very different from those in the past. People have a lot of responsibility at a fairly young age. I’m running it in some ways like a startup. We took a step back, and said, ‘What are we about?’” Myer says he wanted the WTIA to have more of an impact on the younger generation. To that end, he also recruited startup leaders like Keith Smith, now CEO of BigDoor Media, to the board.

—On the main challenge of trade associations: “Trade associations and chambers of commerce have definitely felt it: the Internet. What an association is, it’s a group of people getting together and talking to peers. If [people] can do that online, you have to be really focused to deliver value,” Myer says. “Every new job, you have to adapt. What are the issues in this business, and what are the rules of the game? You are clearly appealing differently to people when you’re selling a membership in a trade association than when you’re selling a particular product or service. You’re appealing to their community instincts. You appeal to their return-on-investment needs, and their feelings of belonging to the community they’re part of.” At the same time, he says, “there are opportunities to partner [with other organizations] in this world that you don’t have in the commercial world. You’re mission driven, not profit driven.”

—On his timing and the future: “It’s principally time to make a change,” Myer says. “I really like big challenges, big problems to solve, big opportunities to go after. This job is not over. There’s always more that can be done. We’re just at the beginning.”

I pressed him a little on whether he’d return to an executive role at an established tech company. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “There was something very satisfying in doing something very different.” He added that he’ll probably look at both options—trying something new again, and returning to the industry in a more conventional role. “I’ve relied on my gut sense of what feels right. The common thing, as I look at my career, is I view every job as a new tool for my toolbox.”

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The biggest news in a very busy week around the Seattle technology scene has been that Rob Glaser is out as chief executive of RealNetworks. Glaser stepped down on Wednesday after 16 years at the helm, but he remains chairman of the board and Real’s largest shareholder.

Back in 1994, after leaving Microsoft, Glaser founded Progressive Networks, which changed its name to RealNetworks and became a publicly traded company in 1997. Real is best known for its contributions in digital media, such as RealPlayer and RealAudio multimedia software, the RealGames and RealArcade video game business, and Rhapsody music service. (See a few thoughtful stories about Glaser’s impact on the tech world and the Seattle startup community, in the Seattle Times and TechFlash, and All Things Digital.)

Glaser, 47, has been a controversial figure throughout his time at Real, having earned a reputation as an intense and demanding leader. Some people will no doubt be interested in recent reports that he was “eased out” by Real’s board of directors, or that the value of his stock in the company has gone up by $40 million since he resigned. (He held 51,972,162 shares, or about a 38 percent stake in the company, as of its most recent proxy filing last August.)

But I wanted to start processing the news this week by talking with people Glaser worked with, to get a better sense of the man behind the reputation: his leadership qualities, vision, and impact. Here are some of the thoughts and reactions I’ve gotten so far from former Real employees in the business community.

From Kelly Jo MacArthur, former general counsel and chief of staff at RealNetworks (a 10-year veteran who left the company in 2007):

“Rob is indeed a visionary thinker. Throughout the time I’ve known him, people around the world have sought out his perspective, ideas, and vision. My hope is that we’ll get a lot more of Rob’s vision throughout society. He has a lot of perspective and interest in issues like climate change, and he’s very focused on the set of societal problems we’re facing for the next hundred years. And the opportunities we’ve created through a new mass medium, in the truest sense of the word, that we can all control and inform. It truly gives us the ability to be a much more educated, democratized, communicative, informed world. Which was one of his goals when he first wrote the business plan for Progressive Networks in 1994. The world is there now.

“I don’t know what [his] next thing will be. He must have so many possibilities. He still owns 38 percent of RealNetworks and is the chairman of the board. He cares very, very deeply about everyone at RealNetworks and the success of the company, frankly, less because of his financial interest than because he cares so deeply about the company and the people. I think he’ll continue to play the role of helping Real transform itself and move forward in the future.

“Transition is hard for any leader. But ideally, great leaders understand when their teams are ready and the time has come to let them lead the charge and step into a different place. I think he’ll be productive at Real in a different capacity. The team he has in place is extremely capable. Rob has a unique ability to hire some of the absolutely very best and brightest and committed people. That’s never changed, not in 16 years. The company went through and survived two very, very difficult economic cycles that few companies of its size and resources could. They survived many monumental shifts in the technology industry. They came out on the other side of being in the gun sights of Microsoft.

“I read somewhere this week that Rob is known for taking on big fights, and that’s one of the things that can make him interesting to work for. The challenge, of course, is always to … Next Page »

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In the fascinating maelstrom that is Google in China, one thing is clear: this affects all of us. It’s not about whether Google’s decision to draw a line in the sand is based on ideals versus profits. It’s not about whether the Chinese government will open up its Internet policies and play ball with the rest of the world. It’s about the future of every company on the Web—including Microsoft, Amazon, RealNetworks, and all the smaller companies out there.

In case you haven’t been following every twist and turn, earlier this week Google said it might pull out of China following its investigation of a cyber attack that it says originated in China, targeting at least 20 large companies (including Google). One apparent goal of the attacks was to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Google said it is “no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Google’s statement is very carefully worded. It doesn’t explicitly accuse Chinese officials of any wrongdoing. But the reactions of a lot of people, from the media to tech-business leaders to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have helped portray the situation as a cut and dried “Google (and freedom of information) vs. China (and censorship)” issue.

I want to tackle one piece of this sprawling puzzle. And that is the huge, ongoing cultural challenge that Google, Microsoft, and other western companies face in setting up business operations in China. No, this is not a new issue. But one part of the Google announcement was particularly telling: “We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today.”

Google has now been up and running in China for four years. That is not a lot of time to build deep relationships. And it certainly doesn’t help that Google’s biggest competitor in China, Baidu, is backed by the Chinese government.

Heading up Google’s China effort until recently was Kai-Fu Lee, the controversial ex-Microsoft vice president who founded Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing in 1998. Lee, a Chinese high-tech celebrity and education leader, was head of Google China from 2006 until last September, when he left the company to create an incubator in Beijing for Chinese high-tech startups.

In my view, it may not be a coincidence that the current situation has come about so soon after Lee’s departure. Frankly, I’m surprised this all didn’t come to a head much sooner for Google. But perhaps it was through Lee’s efforts that it didn’t—or maybe, conversely, it’s part of why Lee left Google. (I’ve pinged him for comment, but haven’t heard back on this topic.)

Which brings me to some analysis. Back in 2003, while he was at Microsoft, … Next Page »

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[Updated 3:30pm 1/9/10 with clarification (see below)] If you want to know which companies are looking to hire top young business talent around town, just ask the group of 20 or so first-year MBA students from MIT Sloan School of Management. The students from Cambridge, MA, are in Seattle this week looking to make contacts for jobs and summer internships.

It’s all part of the annual “tech trek” program in which some 150 Sloan MBA students split up to visit companies in Seattle, Silicon Valley, and the Boston area. The students on the Seattle leg visited Adobe, Microsoft, and RealNetworks yesterday, and they are at Amazon, Starbucks, and T-Mobile today.

I met up with a group of them over drinks last night. They had a refreshingly candid perspective on job prospects at Seattle tech companies, and some valuable insights into the local tech-business scene. (Almost worth the $43 parking ticket I got from the BluWater Bistro lot—it’s been one of those weeks.)

“The job market is better than last year. Companies are very receptive, and positions are open,” says Sloan student Hilda Tang, a former management consultant in New York City and a native of Vancouver, BC. Tang helped organize this year’s trip to Seattle, together with fellow first-year Ryan Thurston, a former design engineer and product manager at Seattle-based Impinj. “Everyone’s hiring, but they’re hedging their bets,” Thurston says.

Kathryn Wepfer, another Sloan student, previously worked for four years at General Electric in Massachusetts managing a technology development program (defense work). Wepfer went on the Silicon Valley leg of the trip earlier this week, where Sloan students visited VMware, Cisco, Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Zynga. Last year, Google and Yahoo didn’t participate, as their hiring was on hold. This year, the students say Google is hiring selectively for positions in finance, operations, marketing, and business development; Yahoo didn’t impress, with one student commenting, “What are [they], really?”

It sounds like some companies were much better at marketing themselves to students than others. The strongest reaction I got was when I asked about their visit to Apple (in Silicon Valley). “Everyone came away totally creeped out,” one student said, adding that the company came off as “secretive” and “sterile,” and that during their visit, at least one Apple employee admitted it wasn’t a great place to work while Steve Jobs was on leave.

[This paragraph added on 1/9/10 for more context on Apple---Eds.] This student followed up with me later to say, “We heard from people in finance, marketing, and product management—everyone hands down was very excited about their job and being part of the Apple community. It’s a very attractive company to me, but it is somewhat difficult to see the reality of the secretive culture that may be necessary to maintain Apple’s ability to create products that change the world. I, and I think the rest of the group, appreciated their openness and honesty.”

On the Seattle front, I had to wonder about Microsoft, which is coming off a year of … Next Page »

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Not to hype this too much, but TechStars coming to town could be the rallying point for a new generation of high-tech entrepreneurship in Seattle—the likes of which we haven’t seen before. At least, that’s the word from two of the main investors responsible for bringing the tech startup program here. (By now, most of our readers know about Boulder, CO-based TechStars, but in case you missed it, here are some stories from earlier about the seed-stage investment fund’s expansion to Boston and Seattle.)

This is the latest intriguing concept we’ve seen from VCs who are going back to basics by focusing on early-stage companies and creating a central nurturing environment (including office space) where entrepreneurs can network among themselves and, most importantly, get mentorship from more experienced people. Polaris Venture Partners, for one, has done this with Dog Patch Labs in San Francisco, Boston, and now New York. Seattle-based Accelerator is one local example where a similar concept has worked for early-stage biotech companies.

Andy Sack, executive director of the new Seattle program, gave me some historical perspective on the tech scene. When he moved to Seattle from Boston in 2000, he says, “there was next to no entrepreneurial infrastructure.” There were investors and startups, sure, but there was no main café to meet at, no hangouts, none of that. In Sack’s view, things have changed a lot in the past three years, for the better. But, despite a lot of grassroots efforts to support tech entrepreneurs, “nothing has really pulled the community together,” he says. Providing that kind of supportive environment, where entrepreneurs can make connections and really think, is one of the key ideas driving TechStars. (Sack, a serial tech entrepreneur and investor, didn’t say yet where TechStars will be located physically.)

“Seattle needs that because it needs to come together to support fledgling seed-stage companies,” he says. It sounds a lot like the motivation Sack had when he and Chris DeVore started Founder’s Co-op, a seed-stage fund and mentorship program, in 2008. Yet TechStars promises to be more than that.

“There hasn’t been something like this in Seattle, or even in the Valley, where literally the entire investment community has come behind something and made it work for startups,” says Greg Gottesman, a managing director at Madrona Venture Group.

What I hadn’t fully appreciated is that virtually every tech investment firm in town has signed on to a three-year commitment to put a small, separate fund into TechStars. That includes everyone from Madrona to Ignition Partners, Voyager Capital, OVP Venture Partners, Maveron, Buerk Dale Victor, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Second Avenue Partners, Trilogy Partners, and WRF Capital, to prominent angel investors such as Linden Rhoads from UW Tech Transfer. Plus heavy hitters Jeff Bezos and Paul Allen are also behind it. (No word yet on whether Bill Gates is in.)

It’s not a lot of money—the fall 2010 session will host about 10 companies (mostly Web focused) with $18,000 max each—but it shows a real commitment to making the program work. “You put it on your books and you’re committed to it,” Gottesman says. “It’s not, ‘Maybe I’ll show up.’ They’re putting money and time into it.” He adds, “Everyone thinks the timing is right. It’s a shot in the arm for really early-stage startups. “

TechStars doesn’t like to be labeled as an “incubator”—probably because so many of those operations have failed—but its essential function is to nurture very early-stage companies along until they can raise enough money to stand on their own feet. If all goes well, local venture firms will be competing for access to the best startups that emerge from the program. To this end, it sounds like a lot of investors around town had to put their egos aside for the greater good, to make the program happen.

“We didn’t want it to be a Madrona thing. We didn’t want it to be a Founder’s Co-op thing. … Next Page »

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Yesterday’s official announcement that TechStars, the startup boot camp and seed-stage investment fund, is coming to Seattle next fall has a lot of us here buzzing with anticipation. Founded in Boulder, CO, in 2007, the program invites about 10 small tech startups for three months of training and mentorship, and awards $6,000 per founder in exchange for a 6 percent equity slice of each company. So far, TechStars has supported 39 startups, with about three-quarters of them receiving follow-on financing. The program expanded to Boston earlier this year.

Of course, there will be some challenges unique to Seattle. More on that soon. Meantime, I pinged TechStars co-founder Brad Feld, a noted entrepreneur and VC, to ask him whether the program’s experience in Boston explicitly paved the way for Seattle.

“Absolutely,” Feld says. “When we expanded to Boston, we weren’t sure if we would be effective in another city. The experience in Boston far exceeded any expectations we had. The Boston community really rose to the occasion and embraced TechStars, and as part of it we were able to generalize our view of what was necessary for TechStars to be successful in another city. We spent a lot of time this fall thinking about expansion beyond Boulder and Boston and now have a very deliberate strategy for what we are going to do and how we are going to do it.”

A big part of that is finding the right person to lead the local effort—in Seattle’s case, it’s tech investor and entrepreneur Andy Sack, who co-runs the seed-stage fund Founder’s Co-op. Sack has previously served as a mentor in TechStars (and he started his career in Boston).

“We spent a lot of time last year thinking about the right profile for the person to run the program in Boston,” Feld says. ”As part of that, David Cohen (TechStars’ founder—who has been running the Boulder program) identified the characteristics he had that made special magic happen in Boulder. We determined the person needed to be an entrepreneur who deeply understood the Internet and software, had both successful and unsuccessful startup experiences, had raised angel and VC money in previous companies, was well connected and respected in the local community, was a tireless advocate for startups and entrepreneurship, and had a style that could relate to first time entrepreneurs. Oh—and the person had to be a nerd.”

“Sound like Andy?” he asks.

Feld adds, “This was what we went through when we recruited Shawn Broderick to run the Boston program. We used the same filter when we thought about Seattle and Andy was the unambiguous top choice. And it was awesome that he wanted to do it!”

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Yes, it’s another big rumor confirmed today… TechStars, the two-year-old seed-stage investment fund and boot camp for tech startups, announced it is expanding to Seattle in the fall of 2010. Seattle entrepreneur and investor Andy Sack will lead the local effort as executive director. Sack has previously served as a mentor in Boston and in Boulder, CO, where TechStars began. He also co-leads Founder’s Co-op, an early-stage startup fund based in Seattle.

Each three-month session of TechStars accepts about 10 startups, and applications for Seattle will open next May. The program provides extensive mentoring and up to $6,000 to each co-founder, in exchange for a 6 percent equity stake in the company.

Last month, a TechStars event in Seattle organized by co-founders Brad Feld and David Cohen led to an interesting discussion about startup culture in Boston, Seattle, and Boulder—as well as the tolerance for failure in various entrepreneurial circles.

The list of mentors for the Seattle program reads like a who’s who of the local tech innovation scene: so far, they include (this is not a complete list) Alex Algard, Adam Brotman, Marcelo Calbucci, Chris DeVore, Steve Hirsch, Josh Hug, Ben Huh, Nathan Kaiser, Glenn Kelman, Shane Kim, Andy Liu, T.A. McCann, Neil Patel, Josh Petersen, Dave Schappell, Edward Yim, and the Urbanspoon guys (Adam Doppelt, Ethan Lowry, and Patrick O’Donnell); as well as VCs Erik Benson, Geoff Entress, Enrique Godreau, Bill McAleer, Michelle Jacobson Goldberg, Brad Silverberg, Greg Gottesman, Steve Hall, and Melinda Lewison.

We hope to have more on the Seattle program soon.

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I wish I could say this is just about sex, but it isn’t. Nevertheless, a lot has changed since we last heard from Blackbox Republic, the Portland, OR-based niche social network that is trying to be a more private and intimate alternative to Facebook and Match.com, for helping manage your personal life. The paid site officially opens for business today.

To refresh your memory, Blackbox Republic was started earlier this year by Jive Software’s former chief marketing officer, Sam Lawrence, and blogger and community relations guru April Donato. Back in July, the company announced it had raised $1 million in angel capital, and was gearing up for a full launch of its social network, which was originally focused on the “sex-positive” community—typically, young people who are very open to other people’s sexual orientations and lifestyles.

But, like most startups, Blackbox decided it needed to change up. Observers were confused by the sex-positive label. Plus, what Lawrence and Donato were doing was potentially much broader than that. What didn’t change was Blackbox’s focus on creating a safe, private network for “like-minded people to share their personal life,” Lawrence says.

So who is the ideal Blackbox member? That remains to be seen, but Lawrence says the people attracted to the site so far tend to be “a bit different, not mainstream.” They are looking for something besides traditional dating sites or public social networks like Facebook and MySpace. And Lawrence says they are “super-diverse, right-brained people” who tend to work in fashion, technology, entertainment, and other creative sectors. He adds that Blackbox wants to be like “Apple to Facebook’s PC.”

One key differentiator is that Blackbox charges a monthly fee—$5, $25, or $49, for different levels of features that include things like event planning and sending gifts. The openness of its target audience is reflected by sliding-scale labels that members can set on their profile pages to describe where they are on the continuum between gay and straight, looking for partners or attached, and so forth—and they can change them any time. Blackbox isn’t freezing out more traditional social media either: members can post comments to Twitter and Facebook from within the site.

But Lawrence emphasizes that what members say in Blackbox Republic will stay private. There’s no danger of what they post inside becoming part of their “Google resume,” as he puts it. He says he would resist efforts from search engines to index content the way Facebook and Twitter allow. “The value proposition is this is the first private, large social network out there,” Lawrence says.

Private or not, new social networks face a slew of tough obstacles—most notably, how to get a critical mass of members to sign up, and how to generate revenue. Blackbox is starting out with nearly 600 “founding” members as of today—community leaders, activists, and other social connectors. Lawrence says they are based mostly in U.S. cities, but roughly 35 percent are international, in places like London, Mumbai, and Shanghai.

Time will tell whether Blackbox takes off. To boost revenues in the meantime, Lawrence says he is working on a number of business development deals. He couldn’t be too specific just yet, but they may include partnering with entertainment companies, as well as tapping into where people go to buy products. “It’s the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “You can expect from us a lot more innovation.”

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‘Tis the season for layoffs, we’re sorry to say. In the past month, we’ve seen some major staff cuts from the big tech and life sciences companies, as well as startups, around Seattle (see our updated Northwest layoff tracker here). The carnage has really picked up in the past week. Here’s a rundown of notable layoffs:

—Seattle-based ZymoGenetics (NASDAQ: ZGEN) cut 52 jobs this week, about 15 percent of its workforce. The company is refocusing its efforts on its marketed drug for surgical bleeding, and other existing product candidates. It’s the second layoff for ZymoGenetics this year; the company cut 161 jobs in April and now has about 300 employees left.

—Wetpaint, a Seattle Internet startup focused on social publishing, laid off nine employees yesterday, including two of the company’s co-founders. The move is part of a strategic refocusing, according to a report in TechFlash that says the company has 30 employees left. Wetpaint has not yet confirmed the staff cuts or strategy shift with me. It has raised some $40 million in venture funding since 2005.

—Bellevue, WA-based Smith & Tinker, a gaming and entertainment company, cut 30 percent of its staff (about 15 positions), according to VentureBeat. The company has not confirmed the number of layoffs; it had 50 employees as of August. Smith & Tinker has raised $29 million in venture funding since 2007.

—San Jose, CA-based Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) didn’t say how many positions were cut in the Seattle area as part of the 9 percent layoffs (about 670 employees) reported last month. But at least one notable Seattle executive, Bill McCoy, has confirmed he is leaving the company. McCoy is Adobe’s general manager of ePublishing Business; he is the company’s main e-book expert.

—Seattle-based RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) cut 4 percent of its worldwide staff in early November, amounting to about 70 out of 1,700 jobs. The economic downturn and cost-cutting were given as reasons for the layoff. RealNetworks reported a small profit for the third quarter of this year, the company’s first profitable quarter since the first three months of 2008.

—Seattle’s Classmates.com, which is owned by United Online (NASDAQ: UNTD), laid off 71 employees, or 17 percent of its workforce, early last month, as reported by TechFlash. The news was confirmed in a company earnings call. United Online said the move was made to increase efficiencies and streamline operations.

—Last, but certainly not least, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) cut 800 more positions across the company exactly one month ago, in its third round of layoffs this year. About a quarter of the jobs were in the Seattle area. One East Coast casualty was Don Dodge, Microsoft’s director of business development for the Emerging Business Team (and unofficial startup ambassador), based in Cambridge, MA. Dodge has since agreed to join Google. The layoff news came on the heels of Microsoft posting an 18 percent quarterly decline in profits as compared with the third quarter of 2008.

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Tonight’s Xconomy Forum on The Future of Search and Information Discovery is now officially sold out. Thanks for all the interest—it’s going to be a great evening, with some really great networking.

For those of you who grabbed tickets before they ran out, registration starts at 5:30 pm at the Walker-Ames Room in Kane Hall (second floor), on the west side of the University of Washington campus. You can try to park on the street, or in the Central Plaza parking garage off of 15th Avenue NE and NE 41st Street. (See map here, and parking garage directions here.)

So get your questions ready for Google, Microsoft (Bing), Vulcan Capital, UW, venture capitalists, and a bunch of search-related startups. We want this to be as informal and interactive as possible, and look forward to seeing you all there.

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